What phone/plan for tween?

[madteaparty]

DS is going away for a week of summer camp and I want to get a phone again. I don't want it to have data, I don't think, but just want him able to text (camp website states this is the method student communicate w parents).

He had a non smart phone with tracfone minutes but that phone is apparently too old now. What's good currently?

We need a phone for him not just for summer because he sometimes goes away for the weekend or I leave him home if I'm running DD someplace...

[EndOfOrdinary]

We have a standard "dumb phone." Slide out qwerty keyboard. No data. Shared basic minute plan. It costs ten dollars a month. The phone was only $30 new, and if I got one for $30 Ds' was a buck. We use Verizon.

[madteaparty]

We have a standard "dumb phone." Slide out qwerty keyboard. No data. Shared basic minute plan. It costs ten dollars a month. The phone was only $30 new, and if I got one for $30 Ds' was a buck. We use Verizon.

thanks!

[purduemeche]

Ditto on the slideout keyboard...the LG is the latest we had from Verizon and it worked fine.  You are wise to NOT get data for this phone.

Edited April 12, 2016 by purduemeche

[Pen]

We got TracFone with the Alcatel One Touch Pop Icon (which is semi-smartish), one for me and one for my son, and have been happy with that. From HSN it was something like $129 including the phone and a year of calling and 1200 or so minutes, texts, and data--but he'd not need to use the data--so basically the phone was more or less free or maybe $9ish with the year and minutes.  I am thinking to update an older dumb phone to the Alcatel, but sort of waiting for a sale for maybe an even better price. About the only thing the phone won't do at all is "tether." Its picture taking is  not great, but at least something. It can play Audible books, has good speaker phone quality, an alarm clock...  Compared to Verizon and an iPhone, I guess it is mediocre (so my son tells me), but the price is a lot better.

[Kuovonne]

Since you have used Tracfone before, why not use it?

 

My tweens have gone through several phones with service from Tracfone.

They have used dumb phones without a keyboard (just a number pad),

Android phones with a very old os, and currently iPhones.

Each type of phone served its purpose well at the time.

 

If you do not want your kid to have access to data,

do not get a smartphone. With Tracfone, a smartphone

automatically gets data whenever you get minutes.

 

Be aware that most of Tracfone's non-smartphones still have

internet access, even though they are not smartphones.

They use minutes to access the internet.

 

Get a phone that has a full keyboard - either a physical

keyboard, such as a slider, or an on-screen touch keyboard.

Trying to text on a phone with just a number pad is aweful.

 

Tracfone has several phones that have on-screen touch

keyboards. I find. an on-screen touch keyboard superior to

a physical keyboard.

 

Go month-to-month. Even though it is cheaper per minute

to pay for a year in advance, if your tween burns through minutes/texts

quickly, you are stuck. My kids are on a family plan. It is $10/month

for the first phone, and $6/month for the second phone.

If my kids want more talk/text/data than the family plan,

they must pay for that themselves.

 

If you really want to restrict access to the internet on the phone,

you might want to consider getting an Android smartphone and install

parental controls that limit what apps he can use. I did this with

my kids' Android phones. I setup the parental controls app to let them

have access to the camera, text, phone, and a few other harmless apps.

They could not get to the browser, email, or anything else internet related.

 

One advantage of going this route is that you get triple minutes through

Tracfone, instead of double minutes. So you get more minutes per $,

and still restrict internet access.